I don’t know if Winters School is the right term to use here but what could be envisaged is a series of workshops, talks and basic conversations to be held over the winter. When do activists, people with an interest just get to talk to each other, maybe watch a film, go for a walk, solve a problem.
Maybe let off some steam about what is going on around us. Coupled with what it is we can actually do ourselves, or together, to perform a useful part in the process of making positive and effective change
Maybe workshop some ideas to create solidarity and encourage folk to become involved in public life. By thinking of ways that this kind of transition could be made and encouraged through compelling events and activities. Through the AYNTK process. Where the student in one workshop could be the tutor in another.
While there is much talk around solidarity which is important and we need. We also need to think about where that solidarity can be used most effectively. Maybe through building a vision, manifesto and strategies for change. Maybe through some uncontroversial aims and goals that ordinary people can understand and can see a future in.
Maybe about building formats that ordinary people can understand and connect with as well as making learning space that the activists can learn how to connect with ordinary people.
We have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know. Richard P. Feynman. I guess the job for the activist is to find the reasons, but by also remembering. Stefan Szczelkun’s words. “Real understanding is playful it is curious”
It is also important that we gain human control and agency over how we experience this computational led universe. Basically in learning how to use technology and raising our expectations in putting it to use for a better cause other than the extraction and distraction of the tech oligarchs exploitive and dangerous algorithms.
Food for thought?
AYNTK